


Echoes and Eternity

by hardboiledbaby



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, M/M, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 15:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1988901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardboiledbaby/pseuds/hardboiledbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes was gone, but Watson can still hear his words.</p><p>Post-AGoS, a sequel of sorts to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1144108">"Falling, Always Falling."</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes and Eternity

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Watsons_Woes 2014 July Writing Prompts Challenge, prompt #19 - **Whump whump whump, yeah yeah yeah** : Whump Watson. Whump him well.
> 
> Here, have some whump of the wangsty variety.

_"You'll settle down, have a family, and I'll... die alone."_

_"Yes, that's about it."_

Watson had made light of Holmes's overly dramatic pronouncement at the time, but now....

Now, try as he might, he could not get the echo of those words out of his head, nor yet the bleak tone of Holmes's voice as he uttered them. The infuriating, insufferable bastard was gone and Watson could not take his own words back.

Surely Holmes realised that he would not be alone. He had to have known that Watson's marriage did not mean an end to their friendship—

_"You're the one with no friends."_

Watson felt his gut knot as he recalled the angry barb he had thrown at Holmes before stalking off for the gaming tables. Holmes had not denied the accusation. 

Theirs had always been a relationship that defied ready classification: devoted beyond mere comrades in arms, but too tempestuous for easy camaraderie. Holmes, brilliant and mercurial, was a difficult man to know, to love.

Love. Yes, he had loved Sherlock Holmes. He could admit that now, if only to himself. And Holmes....

_"Perhaps it's better for one to die alone than to live life in eternal purgatory."_

Dear God. 

_Whose life did you mean, Holmes—mine? Or yours?_

Not that it mattered. In the end, it was all one and the same.

In the end, Holmes died, although not alone. He sacrificed himself to ensure Moriarty's demise: a death for a death. 

_"No possible solution could be more congenial to me than this."_

Watson buried his face in his hands. The echo of Holmes's words was his purgatory, then; the unwanted wisdom of hindsight, his cross to bear.

And eternity is a very, very long time.


End file.
